Excerpt from Barack Obama's watershed speech on race. "My gut was telling me that this was a teachable moment," he explained to Joe Klein of Time magazine.
(Politicratos)

(Newser)
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Barack Obama is an adult. That, writes Joe Klein in Time, is why he's winning—"the steadiness of his temperament and the judicious quality of his decision-making." In contrast, John McCain seems to lurch wildly, making a "peremptory selection" of a running mate and suspending his campaign for no clear substantive reason. “Obama seems a grown-up, in a nation that badly needs some adult supervision.”

Obama was green not long ago, but he’s learned to discuss policy in comprehensible thoughts, not talking points. The Democrat dared to challenge Americans on the complexity of race, just as he dared to disagree with Gen. David Petraeus to his face. He may be the candidate we need, onetime McCain booster Klein argues, “to get the public and the media to think about long-term solutions rather than short-term balms.”